The Taylor School District reached a five-year tentative agreement with the Taylor Federation of Teachers that would prevent its union employees from having the option of leaving the teacher’s union, the superintendent confirmed.

The contract is expected to be approved by the school board at a special school board meeting tonight. The contract will prohibit union members from exercising their right to not pay dues or fees to the union as a condition of employment thanks to Michigan becoming the nation's 24th right-to-work state late last year. The law takes effect March 28, so unions are scrambling to get agreements approved by schools boards and voted upon by members before the new law disallows such agreements.

While union officials routinely claim that workers are free to leave the union, they still require workers to support the union in the absence of a right-to-work law.

Union members in the Taylor School District have been kept in the dark about the details of the agreement, according to a memo released by Union President Linda Scott Moore. Michigan Capitol Confidential confirmed the contents of the memo with a union member.

"In an effort to preserve the tentative agreement the TFT negotiation team and executive board has chosen to withhold the tentative agreement until after the board of education ratifies," Moore wrote in the memo. "While frustrating, the TFT feels that this is in the best interest of our membership. We all have much to lose if we are prevented from moving forward with a ratification vote."

Instead, union members will see the contract for the first time Friday and then will vote on it Feb. 5, said Superintendent Diane Allen, who in an email confirmed the memo's statements.

"I think this tentative agreement will be instrumental in addressing and resolving the significant financial problems faced by the district and wish to thank the Taylor Federation of Teachers for their significant and substantial contributions to the fiscal health of the District," Allen said in a press release.

She did not explain how the school district's financial troubles would be eased. The Taylor School District reportedly is more than $20 million in debt.

Union President Moore and Union Officer Thomas Fulton didn't respond to requests for comment. 

The Taylor School District is the first public entity known to act on forcing union members to pay dues or fees by way of a contract extension, although similar 9-year contracts have been drafted by union representatives at Western Michigan University and Berkley Public Schools.

"Anyone trying to artificially extend a contract is clearly trying to circumvent a law the legislature passed and the governor signed," said Ari Adler, press secretary for Speaker of the House Jase Bolger, R-Marshall. "We would hope that governing bodies would do everything they can to follow the language and the intent of state laws to be good stewards of the tax dollars they are spending and protect worker freedom."

As of 2011, the Taylor School District paid two union stewards to spend more than half their time working exclusively on union business. The district paid Wayne Woodford $96,419 in total compensation and allowed him to spend 75 percent of his time on union business. The other 25 percent of the time he taught at Truman High School. Moore, who is the current union president, is a middle school science teacher in Taylor with $88,016 in total compensation and was allowed to spend 50 percent of her time on union business.

Last month, the Taylor School District was forced to close because teachers called in sick and took vacation days to attend a protest in Lansing against right-to-work legislation.

The Berkley Education Association is considering a collective bargaining agreement that would run through June 30, 2022 that would prevent its members from having the right to opt out of the union. 

The teachers' union has proposed a 9-year "agency fee agreement" that would give the school district the power to deduct dues from the union member's salary. If deducting dues were to be deemed unlawful, the union member could be fired. And if it were unlawful for the union member to be fired, a clause in the contract would allow the union the right “to pursue any other lawful remedies.”

Locking in the contract change before March 27 would prevent union members from benefiting from the state's new right-to-work law, which gives workers the right to not pay dues or fees as a condition of employment.

The Berkley Education Association isn't the first union to try a 9-year contract extension that would skirt the state's right-to-work laws that allows employees the choice as to whether to join a union. The Western Michigan University Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (WMU-AAUP) also is considering a similar contract provision.  

"Many school boards have been subservient to the unions for so long, we can expect them to pull out all stops to prevent change," said Leon Drolet, chair of the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance. "This is further evidence that school boards don't negotiate with teacher unions, they collude with them. Winning with the legislature doesn't end the fight for change. There are some school boards who are willing to be the last Japanese soldier on the last island fighting World War II."

Michigan Capitol Confidential received a draft of the memo that a law firm was asked to review by an Oakland Schools official. The law firm confirmed they reviewed the proposed agreement.

Berkley School Board President Paul Ellison didn’t respond to a request for comment. School Board Vice President Randy Travis referred comment to the school district spokeswoman.

Berkley School District Spokeswoman Jessica Stilger said in an email: "The Berkley School District administration has an excellent relationship with all bargaining units, and will continue to do so with right-to-work legislation. At the moment, the BEA has presented administration with many proposals and all will be considered. However, union negotiations are ongoing and confidential."

Patrick Wright, senior legal analyst for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, called the tactic legally "questionable."

"If 9-year collective bargaining agreements were such a good idea, why haven't they been done before?" Wright said.